By Lee Harding – Western Standard
Regina Public Schools has billed a student’s mother $30,000 to see 17,000 pages following an information request for all communications about her and gender identity issues.
In a request made June 20, parent Lisa Merle asked the administration for all communication records regarding her by Terry Lazarou, supervisor of communications for RPS, recently retired RPS director Darren Boldt, and a teacher and specific named individuals at RPS.
“I asked for information on gender, parental consent, pronouns, Pride, the rainbow week of equality and all of those buzzwords that you would have heard used against parents,” Merle told Western Standard in an interview.
On August 13, Merle received a response saying there were 17,447 pages relevant to her request. Despite having already found the pages, the board was charging her $6,000 to search for them, $1,455 to review them, $17,460 to prepare disclosure, and $4,632 in printing costs, minus an hour of free labour. The total bill was $29,247, for which half ($14,623) had to be paid as a deposit to begin work on the response.
The letter said if an electronic response was acceptable, photocopying costs could be waved.
Merle said she has asked the information commissioner to review the fee estimate and hasn’t decided whether she will pay for the documents. However, she said the “staggering” page count showed educators were “wholly off track” and “fixated” on gender expression issues.
“When you when you talk to your school administrators, your principals, your superintendents, the people in positions that should be able to tell you the truth, they’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s not really happening. It’s just such a small part of what we do,’ and we’re really not that interested in it,” Merle said.
“You get that number back, and it’s like, holy s___, that’s all you’ve been talking about!”
Merle said her children are getting messages on gender identity and expression at school that run contrary to those at home.
“I know that my kids are extraordinarily uncomfortable with any of this content being taught in schools because they know that it doesn’t align with the beliefs and the values of our family,” she said.
“I don’t care about your sexual orientation or gender identity in life, but as it pertains to children, and what you’re telling my children, I care very much, because all of these concepts that they’re forwarding are just built on a fallacy. Gender affirming care is gender confusing harm as it pertains to little kids. This is a true story,” she added.
In 2021, Merle questioned in a post to Twitter (“X”) how one teacher would treat an unvaccinated student, given the teacher had stated of the unvaccinated that “their selfishness knows no bounds.” In response, the teacher said she would treat those students like any other, but called Merle a “cowardly little bully.” In later posts, the teacher said Merle had “nothing but hate in her heart,” venting “spite” daily, with so much “venom” it was “toxic.”
Merle said her opposition to gender ideology in schools only fed the fire.
“I was made a target of harassment by this insane left activist group online,” Merle said. “It absolutely eviscerated any dignity that we would have as parents and as parents of kids that go to the school division.”
Merle provided screenshots of the comments to Western Standard, some posted as late as May of this year. She said complaints to Regina Public Schools fell on deaf ears.
“If a social worker negatively attacked the parents of kids in their care on the internet, would they still be a social worker? No. When teachers do it, they roll out the red f___ing carpet and they do nothing to protect the family.”
Merle was also put off by how a sexual touching incident at her children’s elementary school was handled. She said one female student took another another girl aside on the playground during school hours and reached into her pants. She said it was common knowledge among the perpetrator’s peers that she had an online older male as a “boyfriend.” According to Merle, the person groomed her for this inappropriate act.
According to Merle, the perpetrator and the victim were both transferred out of that school, only to have both of them put in the same school elsewhere. She said the parents were never advised about the sexual incident at school.
Merle’s child was put into noon-hour school discussions for a handful of friends of the victim, led by a school counsellor. Merle said her child participated in the group during two school years but the mother only found out about it incidentally when her child asked for lunch money.
Merle said she immediately demanded answers from the school principal last fall. She said the principal was new to the school and unfamiliar with the noon hour meetings, but Merle followed up with the facilitator herself.
“The counselor actually said to me, ‘Well, this is just a way for me to make extra money,” Merle recalled.
“And I said, ‘Do you think that when I pay my school supervision lunch fees, that I should know that I’m paying for a counselor to see my kid?”
The Western Standard asked Lazarou to confirm whether Merle had made a complaint. He replied, “I have forwarded it to the school division’s senior management. Please be aware that Regina Public Schools works with complainants directly and it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
Regarding the alleged playground incident and how it was handled, Lazarou replied, “It is difficult for us to answer this question without specifics, but it is our expectation that school staff respond to all student and parent concerns following division practice and procedure.”
Lazarou said it is RPS policy that a parent always be informed if their child is seeing a professional for support at school.
“Whenever there is an incident in a school community that may require counsellors, social workers or other professionals to provide general student support, families are informed either directly by telephone call or by letter,” Lazarou explained.
Merle said the incidents have undermined her trust. She is running to Subdivision 7 in Northwest Regina for school board elections November 13. She said her opponents cannot do worse to her than anything that’s already been done. she is prepared for whatever comes against her.
“An easy way to tell if you’re on the right track is if your enemies are furious,” she said.
“They cannot hurt me any worse than they’ve already hurt me, and if they come for me, I’ll know who it is this time. So game on. Let’s go.”